


Not Guilt, Or Sadness, Or Anger

by SabineElectricHeart (TheLifeAndLiesOfFerns)



Category: Stardew Valley (Video Game)
Genre: Angst, Confusion, F/M, Guilt, Mental Anguish, Past Abuse, Self-Doubt, Sports
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-30
Updated: 2021-01-30
Packaged: 2021-03-16 20:28:26
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,000
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29088345
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheLifeAndLiesOfFerns/pseuds/SabineElectricHeart
Summary: Alex felt awful when he made the farmer down the road upset.
Relationships: Alex/Female Player (Stardew Valley)
Kudos: 18





	Not Guilt, Or Sadness, Or Anger

Alex felt awful when he made the farmer down the road upset. He should know, he makes her upset with him plenty of times a week. He does it so often he wonders why she still talks to him after all this time.

Does she enjoy the pain? Does she have an unknown interest in him? Is his grandmother pressuring or bribing the girl in some way?

The tall man could recognize that he felt bad whenever she felt bad, but he refused to admit that it was an empathy thing. He feels no empathy, it is a stupid feeling that has no place in the heart of someone like him.

If it was an empathy thing then how he was supposed to understand how it felt to spend most of his days surrounded by so many people who were incapable of empathy? If he, himself, was a very empathetic person, that would hurt and confuse him, but it did not. It stands to reason, then, that he was not an empathetic person, that was not the case at all.

So no, he did not have empathy for Estella, and he will insist on this point. Yet, he still knew when he upset her.

Sometimes he knew when he upset her, that is. If Alex was to ballpark, he would say that he knew when he upset her about 50% of the time, but he could not get the percentage any more precise because about 50% the time he did not know when he upset her. How can he go about fixing something he does not know it had been broken?

Alex is a simple man. He knows he is not the brightest, he knows he is not bright at all. Whenever he tried to read, the letters jumped from the pages and jumbled into an incomprehensible mess, so eventually he gave up trying. He gave up trying to read, and to study, and to learn. He understands one thing and one thing only, and that was gridball, but in gridball, there was no space for feelings, and so he was not too confident in his ability when it comes to that.

Besides, Estella seemed such a strange person. She smiles when she is sad and cries when she is happy. In a town where everybody has such strict schedules and duties, she had the habit to pop up unexpectedly and work as she pleases, with no regard to the hours and seasons. He knows he is not the only one who does not understand her, but he doubts anyone else feels ill-at-ease whenever her placid expression falters just a little bit when they are dismissive of her.

Or perhaps no-one is as harsh as he is. He knows his grandmother had been very accommodating of Estella’s eccentricities, for one, and the shopkeepers tend to look the other way when it comes to their biggest costumer, but still. His concern, to put it that way, comes from the heart. He just wonders from where exactly that is.

No, no one is as harsh as he is. Some are entitled, some are standoffish, and some are downright mean, but he has a certain talent, he does not know if it is innate or learnt behaviour, he has a certain talent to pick up on people’s weakest points and go to town on them. Some people, those who have to love him, came to tolerate that trait, others pay their respects out of fear to have his tongue and his arm thrown against them, and others despise it and keep their distance.

Again, Estella does not do any of it. Why?

When he realized he made her feel bad, he felt bad. If he recognized that he gave her a negative emotion then he got this feeling that was probably close to guilt, but that word for it never satisfied him. Regardless, the feeling he got when he hurt Estella was bad. It was a specific, as of yet unnamed feeling that was unpleasant to say the least, and it always returned every time he hurt her.

The same feeling. It was not guilt, or sadness, or anger. It was not anything that he had a name for. He does not know how to describe it, and he does not feel really all that comfortable in discussing it, so he never tried to find someone or something that could help him understand it.

He did not want to describe it as an emotion or a feeling, those are for the weak and the pussies, and he was neither of those things. He was strong and capable, and so he was above the influence of such things, he had control over himself, and was proud of it.

Instead of a feeling, Alex was more comfortable defining it as a sensation he perceived. An alert, like the dull pain he felt whenever he was overdoing with the exercising. He had stepped out of the line, and he should not have, and now he had to undo what he did, he had to return to what had been before, to a time when he was not alerted.

Whatever it was, it was awful, and he hated it when he got it. He wanted to fix it, he wanted it gone, but he did not know how to do that. Because he did not know what it is. Because he often did not know what on Earth he had done to cause hurt in the first place.

Alex hated the as of yet unidentified word he experienced, and he only experienced it when he hurt Estella's feelings, so he assumes that is caused, somehow, by that behaviour, even if he does not really know what comes after that dull pain. It was just a single cause with a single effect. He hated the sensation that he got when he hurt Estella, so the end result made some sense to him.

He hated when he hurt Estella.


End file.
